Hold Your Peace. We were made for these times
Damascena Tannous Full Moon Report October 1, 2020
This week we’ve felt the energy climbing to a fever pitch. My hope is to always offer you a unique interpretation of our times. Perhaps something you won’t read anywhere else.
Right now we’ve been served precisely the cosmic line up we need to evolve. Historically Saturn/Pluto aspects mark revolution, glacial size shifts in our world. Saturn is the gatekeeper between the material world and that which is beyond our 3-D reality and Pluto is the phoenix who symbolizes complete metamorphosis. We see Saturn and Pluto making aspects whenever large-scale, world shifting events happen. This current conjunction is like the background music, Saturn and Pluto, playing their anthem to ring out the old, and usher in the new. Rick Tarnas PHD and astrologer, in his great work “Cosmos and Psyche” says of Saturn/Pluto cycles “As planetary cycles affect the affairs of individuals, so too do they inform cultural affairs, the rise and fall of civilizations and the evolution of ideas and technology.” We are in such a time as this. Do you feel it?
The full moon itself is the first of two in October. She is sitting exactly conjunct Chiron in Aries. One of my astrology teacher’s says of Chiron “the centaur is the mentor”. What I’ve learned is that the Centaur’s medicine is frequently about how we rewild our lives. How we break free of the chains that bind us, of conformity and social conditioning, and make our way outdoors, to commune with nature, leaving our ego at the door. In traditional astrology Chiron is aptly named “the wounded healer”. He leaves clues in your chart as to the type of internal childhood wounding you may be carrying. When healed, Chiron points to where your gifts in leadership may lie. Both, Gahndi and Martin Luther King Jr had Chiron in Aries. Chiron in Aries asks you to look at wounds directly related to issues of identity and who has the right to exist in which spaces. When all of these planetary influences combine, Chiron might send out some fiery arrows to help us heal, and make headway on issues of social justice, and identity. Likewise issues of physical rights, rights having to do with the body, and using our voice to express are also on deck. The lineup in Aries are all begging the question, how are you caring for your body? Are you taking care to nurture yourself with good food? Are you remembering to exercise and move? These are trying times. Prioritizing movement will help your system not stagnate, on both the physical and psychic plane. Especially when the impulse to freeze arises as a coping mechanism. I know I am prone to freezing in moments of overwhelm..
As the week opened, Mars at 25 Aries, squared Saturn exactly, at 25 degrees Capricorn. Saturn represents the Government, infrastructures, large systems, and enduring traditional values. Saturn is concerned with the underclass and disenfranchised peoples. Shame, suffering, and our boundaries are all in his portfolio. Also our ability to endure, maintain integrity, character, honor, and having a strong spine during moments of adversity all belong to him. In areas that we are out of integrity, he will bring us back in. He will create the circumstances we need to evolve in 3-D reality.
As we learned in early September, Mars is the planet of war, aggression, anger, innate desires, heat, and iron, our raw passions, our directed action, our ability to defend ourselves and the manor by which we go about it. Like Saturn, it also speaks to our boundaries, but in the way they are enforced. Mars says yes, Saturn says no! Mars pushes the gas, Saturn pumps the brakes. When these two planets combine, it feels as though attempts to move forward are being stifled. As though you have lead on your feet. It’s always my impression under this influence that I have an energy vortex stuck inside my body, with no outlet, no release. A pressure cooker, a weight on my chest. This is where we need our practices. This influence asks us how comfortable are you sitting in the midst of it all. Can you find ways to lean into the discomfort rather than escape? I have been learning a practice of emptying by open eyed meditation, which has been an extraordinary helpmate in keeping the channels open. What are your practices? It’s a good time to dial them in.
So what to do? We have a trio in Aries (Moon, Mars, Chiron) all calling for action and progress. Squaring a trio of planets in Capricorn (Saturn, Jupiter and Pluto) all currently reinforcing that “Wall” Pink Floyd sang about. It all has a very fated feel to it. Whether we are talking collectively with world events, or individually with our own work and relationships. We have all spent the last six months living in various stages of lockdowns and there is currently no sense of certainty or even relief on the horizon. The cosmos dictates that we must endure this polishing. So if this push, pull, polarity of events MUST happen, how do we continue to hold our center in the midst of it all? How do we work with cycles of disintegration and integration? If the caterpillar was aware, would he even consider entering the cocoon? How does he have the faith to know that it’s all going to come back together again?
In an effort to choreograph my own steps to the Saturn/Pluto anthem, one that allows me to continue to thrive, I am reminded of Victor Frankl. I read his small book while living in Palestine, a time in which I felt closed in behind both, physical and mental walls. What he had to say, changed my life. He was an Austrian Neurologist and Psychiatrist who was captured by the Nazi’s and imprisoned in a concentration camp. During the Holocaust he lost his wife and parents. He discovered in the concentration camp that though everything had been taken from him, the one thing that he owned completely was the quality of his thoughts. He decided he would not allow the soldiers in the concentration camp to take his happiness from him. A revolutionary idea, he lays out in his book “Man’s Search for Meaning”.
He says “Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. You cannot always control what happens to you in life, but you can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you”. In other words, we can always choose our attitude towards any given situation There are two other themes he addresses with rigor in this work. He posits that we attain happiness, not by the pursuit of it, but by surrendering the pursuit, and living fully in the moment, and that if one was to pursue something it should be, love, service, and “responsibleness”. which he asserts are all inexorably linked. To have the ability to choose our responses and provide loving service to another, inevitably then happiness ensues. I give you this offering that in addition to our personal practices, we might find a way to cultivate love and extend it outwards. It’s like balm to a sticky stagnant soul. It brings inner peace amongst collective turmoil and helps us on our own search for meaning. May you have peace in these historic, evolutionary times.
